SiSoft Sandra
“SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software. It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers , sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.”
SiSoft really just has too many benchmarks for one program. Here are the 4 they have for GPUs. They are very simple: Video Rendering, Video Memory Bandwidth, GPGPU Processing, and GPGPU Memory Bandwidth. For those unfamiliar with other GPU uses, GPGPU stands for “General Purpose GPU” as in using the GPU for mundane tasks that do not involve graphics or video or anything like that.
 |
 |
| Video Rendering | Video Memory Bandwidth |
 |
 |
| GPGPU Processing | GPGPU Memory Bandwidth |
As you can see, the Sparkle GTS450 does very well. It’s not a slow card, albeit there are faster ones.
PCMark Vantage
“PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista offering one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts.
A PCMark score is a measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security.
From desktops and laptops to workstations and gaming rigs, by comparing your PCMark Vantage score with other similar systems you can find the hardware and software bottlenecks that stop you getting more from your PC.”
PCMark tests just as the name implies, benchmarks your entire PC. It’s a great overall benchmarks that tests every aspect of your computer. It then gives a very detailed printout of what it received in the various test suites and a breakdown within those sections. The suites used to benchmark the entire computer are: Memories Suite, TV and Movies Suite, Gaming Suite, Music Suite, Communications Suite, Productivity Suite, and HDD Test Suite.
Results
Our test machine received a 7630. This score is probably inflated considering our setup, but the scores for the TV & Movies and Gaming tests seem pretty good. More than enough for just watching movies, even blue-ray.
Those are some pretty impressive specs! I have never tried a Sparkle video card before, but I’ve heard great things about them recently so I might consider it in a couple months.
Your site info is really good..
This information is useful for me. Thanks for sharing.
What a great resource!